A need exists to combat the global epidemic of cancer. Cancer is one of the leading causes of disease and the second leading cause of death worldwide. Cancer accounted for 8.8 million deaths in 2015. Globally, nearly one in six deaths is due to cancer. In 2018, there will be an estimated 1,735,350 new cancer cases diagnosed and 609,640 cancer deaths in the United States. In 2012, there were an estimated 3.5 million new cancer cases and 1.9 million cancer deaths in Europe. The World Health Organization estimates in 2018 that the number of new cases of cancer is expected to rise by about 70% over the next two decades.
Traditional cancer treatments include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, amongst other therapies. In recent years, immuno-oncology has emerged as a new option to treat cancer. Immuno-oncology is different from traditional cancer treatments, which, for example, has tried to target tumors directly or to disrupt the tumor blood supply. Instead, immuno-oncology is designed to use the patient's own immune response to treat cancer. Understanding how the immune system affects cancer development and how it can be used to treat cancer has been a challenging, complicated problem. For example, patients may not respond to certain immuno-oncology drugs, and some develop resistance mechanisms, such as T cell exhaustion, which is when a T cell, a specific type of white blood cell, no longer functions properly. (Dempke et al., Eur. J. of Cancer, 74 55-72 (2017)).
An important role of the immune system is its ability to differentiate between normal cells and “foreign” cells. The immune system can thus attack the foreign cells and leave normal cells alone. To do this, the immune system uses “checkpoints,” which are molecules on certain immune cells that need to be activated or inactivated to begin an immune response. Tumor cells can sometimes use these checkpoints to avoid being attacked by the immune system. Some immuno-oncology drugs target these checkpoints by acting as checkpoint inhibitors. Programmed death protein 1 (PD-1) is a checkpoint inhibitor that typically acts as a brake to prevent T cells from attacking other cells in the body. PD-1 does this when it binds to programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), a protein on some normal (and cancer) cells. When PD-1 binds to PD-L1, this interaction tells the T cell to not attack other cells. Some cancer cells have large amounts of PD-L1, which helps them evade immune attack. Therapeutic agents such as monoclonal antibodies that target this PD-1/PD-L1 interaction, such as nivolumab (Opdivo®), can block the PD-1/PD-L1 binding to increase the body's immune response against tumor cells.
A need exists for drugs that target different mechanisms of action that work either alone or in combination with checkpoint inhibitors to safely and effectively treat cancer and other diseases or conditions. T cell activation and function are regulated by the innate immune system through costimulatory molecules in the CD28-superfamily (e.g., positive and negative costimulatory molecules that promote or inhibit activation of the T cell receptor signal, respectively). Inducible COStimulator molecule (ICOS), also known as CD278, is an immune checkpoint protein that is a member of this CD28-superfamily. ICOS is a 55-60 kDa type I transmembrane protein that is expressed on T cells after T cell activation and costimulates T-cell activation after binding its ligand, ICOS-L (B7H2). ICOS is expressed by CD4+ cells, CD8+ cells, and regulatory T cells (Treg). ICOS also has been shown to be a key player in the function of follicular helper T cells (Tfhs) and the humoral immune response.
The magnitude and quality of a T cell's immune response depends in part on the complicated balance between co-stimulatory and inhibitory signals to the T cell. To improve patients' response rates after immunotherapy and to overcome drug resistance, a need exists for novel immuno-oncology therapies.